The Art Of Waiting

Shripath Shankar
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

‘சும்மா இருக்கறது எவ்வளோ கஷ்டம் னு தெரியுமா’

The above, which translates to ‘Do you know how difficult it is to do nothing?’ is an iconic comic line from a Tamil movie. And it is something I immediately identified with. For as long as I remember, I’ve always considered the term ‘wait’ with a certain dread and I don’t believe I’m alone in this regard. The reasons could be a few:

Our entire education system focusses on the students being able to produce solutions to the problems given to them in a short span of time. And the more the students practise this, the more they are likely to develop a tendency, if not an addiction, to pounce on any problem that they are faced with. The early stages of work-life (especially in an engineering setting), is more of the same.

From a very young age, we are taught by the people close to us to not leave things to chance. Let’s put our child in a CBSE school, let’s put them in coaching centres in tenth and twelfth grades, make them work hard to get in a decent college, make sure they get jobs during placements or scholarships to premier universities, get them married before 25, etc - all of them directly stems from the fear of uncertainty and the belief that you can always do something now that will prevent something bad happening in the future. I still vividly remember one of my school teachers telling me during my twelfth grade, “Shripath, it’s your paper. Don’t let the examiner reduce your marks. Don’t give them a chance”. It’s the sort of conditioning that makes waiting (basically not do anything but hope and pray) for an uncertain event arduous.

The cracks began to show as I got older, coming to face with more complex professional and personal challenges. There’s an algorithm in Computer Science called the Ostrich Algorithm, which states that the best way to deal with certain problems is to simply ignore them for the time being. At college, we used to make fun of this algorithm, calling it cowardly and childish. It was only when I encountered certain scenarios at work did I realize how wrong we were. I now personally believe that it is used all the time in problem solving in every walk of life.

Personal challenges were more daunting, as human beings are even less predictable than requirements specifications. People are defined by their insecurities, and for a lot of us, one of them is not being able to trust other people until they establish a sense of ‘trustworthiness’. And among such people are those who believe that the ultimate test of trustworthiness is … waiting.

There are definitely certain situations in which waiting would produce a better outcome than acting on them. But it is easier said than done. Waiting requires considerable will power and it is also difficult to not get emotionally worked up when doing so. Standing still might be the most difficult thing to do sometimes. However, it is true that a number of people, people I’ve met, and celebrities, seem to have no trouble doing it. And a good way to understand how it is done is by watching sports.

MS Dhoni’s career will be remembered for a lot of things, but what I will remember it for is how he structured his run chases. When set a target, Dhoni didn’t play the opposition, he played time. Defending, scrambling for singles, he perplexed the experts and frustrated the fans, but he always knew that the longer the game goes on, the greater the opposition’s chance of panicking and greater his chance of taking his side home. Dhoni’s preference to take games to the last over was, in essence, a mission to reduce the game to a contest between himself and the opposition player bowling the last over, a contest he knew he would win more often that not.

The startling facet of Dhoni’s batsmanship was that he didn’t see time as his demon, but rather as his ally, a powerful tool with which he worked magic. Indeed, time is powerful, it builds worlds, species, fortunes, reputations, relationships and destroys them just the same. And maybe, that’s the secret to waiting — you don’t fight time, or run from it; you respect it, embrace it with all of its possibilities, and with whatever knowledge you gather from it, use it, until of course it destroys you as well.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

Shripath, it’s your paper. You do what you can.

Shripath Shankar

Written by

Front-end Web Developer, Ember.js.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade